Work Text:
- ☼ -
In the mirror, Soobin’s face was glazed with steam and sweat. He thought of Yeonjun, how the immediacy of those hooded eyes coaxed things of Soobin he didn’t even know he had to give. His own eyes were wan, ringed in a faint blue halo.
Soobin stepped under the hot purgatory of the shower head. Oil to foam, slick to soap. He massaged the tense muscles of each arm by digging in with his blunt fingertips, as close to the tendons as he could get, until the pain was more warning than it was relief. Only when the chemical stink of the laundry was washed off of him did Soobin let his mind drift back to thinking of Yeonjun again. Eyes closed, leaning against the tiled wall of the shower, his fingers floated their way down his own body, feeling out a cautious road to an unfamiliar destination.
This was ritual. Yeonjun wasn’t here, but Soobin would always be a supplicant.
The phone hardly ever stopped ringing. Soobin had tried to explain the idea of a website or an app to his parents, with digital scheduling for pick-ups and drop-off times, but the conversation was eternally fruitless.
“Our customers wouldn’t understand it,” said his father in English as he moved damp stacks of bills within the cash drawer of the front register. Always English, in the store.
“Just because you don’t,” started Soobin by rote. Then he picked up the phone.
“Hi,” said Beomgyu on the other end before Soobin could roll off their business greeting.
“Hey. Why didn’t you call my cell?”
Beomgyu tsked, like the question wasn’t even worth answering. “Wanna come over tonight? We could try out that new multiplayer mode–“
“Maybe,” said Soobin with a glance at the clock on the wall. It was ten till five, nearly dusk. “I might have to drop off a few orders after we close up.”
“Okay. Maybe, then,” said Beomgyu. The little quiver of hope in his voice was a fragile thing, but it was still there.
“I’ll let you know later. Bye.”
His father eyed the phone after Soobin let it drop back into its cradle. “That’s the store’s,” he said. “It’s not there for you and your friends to make plans.”
“I’ve told you.” Soobin wasn’t going to have this fight, not again. “They call on this line because I’m too busy working to look at my cell. You can’t have it both ways– I’m either working hard and they call me here, or I have my phone on me all the time.”
He went into the back of the shop. In the back room, his mother was bent over the work desk with her magnification lens trained over a wedding dress. Her needle flew in and out of the fabric with machine precision, beading the edge of the bodice with little crystals like fresh flakes falling on a snowbank. It was the first blush of spring; weddings would be rolling through the city for months on end, keeping her chained to that desk with her bug-eyed spectacles and her taped up fingers, working furiously on somebody else’s day of glory. Without a word, Soobin began checking the wash and fold orders of the day and packing them in separate bags.
Then, when the hands on his dollarstore Timex clicked over to three minutes before five o’clock, Soobin spoke. “Dad was just closing up outside. You should wind down too, don’t go home late. ”
His mother finally looked up at him. “You’re always hurrying us out these days. This dress isn’t ready yet.”
“The bride’s not coming back until next week, Ma. Go on. I’ll make some deliveries and then be home for dinner.”
She blinked at him, slow, then got to her feet with a nod. As usual after sitting for a few hours, her right leg set back her walk to a slight hobble. When she stood in front of him, Soobin found himself thinking, she looks old. There was a time when she didn’t, and Soobin could not remember when the change had happened. But before him now was an aged woman. He felt divorced from her body, the womb from which he’d grown and sprung.
With a hand on his shoulder, she told him to be careful.
Soobin stayed until he heard them lock the front door. The old car engine sputtering to a start, pulling out of its spot with some reluctance, was his sign. He emerged from the back room with careful steps. The whole shop was quiet finally, as it could only be in closing, with all its machines at rest for the night. Cleaning was a daytime affair. But now, it was the hour when nocturnal things began to stir. Soobin waited behind the counter, his fingertips dancing along its chipped laminate edge with anticipation. When the long shadows of the afternoon began to recede back towards the front windows, the lock unlatched itself with a click.
The door swung open, and Yeonjun prowled in. He wore his long, burnt orange fur coat as though it were a crown over his whole body, and it might as well have been. Jade earrings in the shape of lotus flowers swung from his earlobes on red thread, like twin hypnotist’s pendants flanking his face. A gust of wind and sharp pine swept into the shop behind him; he seemed to bring the forest wherever he went.
“Hello again,” Yeonjun said. “Are you still open?”
“Hi, yes.” Soobin’s body wanted to move behind the register, as it was used to doing whenever a customer came in. But he stopped himself. Instead, he stumbled around the counter on the shaky legs of a newborn fawn, defenseless and knowing it.
“Good.”
Yeonjun turned his back to Soobin. His hands peeled apart the collar of his coat; inch by inch the fur slid down his bare shoulders and off his naked body. Soobin leapt forward to catch it from falling onto the scuffed flooring of the laundry. In his arms, it was unbelievably thick and soft. Never in his life had he seen such fur. It was a pity to let it touch a surface that wasn’t Yeonjun’s own skin.
When Soobin straightened up, they were standing close. If he wanted to, he could look over the pearlescent rise of Yeonjun’s shoulder and count his lashes, brightly dyed to match his sorbet hair. The effect was almost hallucinatory, especially when Yeonjun looked back at him– those thin little hairs framing his eyes, like runway lights for Soobin’s gaze, directing all notice down to twin event horizons.
“And the one from yesterday?” Yeonjun whispered.
Soobin nodded quickly. “I’ll get it, please stay here,” he said, though Yeonjun had never left without first picking up his order.
In the back room, Soobin carefully hung up the fur on a hanger next to the dry cleaning machines. Then, on an old rack in the storage closet, he retrieved the previous day’s fur, painstakingly cleaned after hours last night. It was the exact same, down to the cut and construction; every day another burnt orange fur coat. Every day another secret for Soobin to hide.
Yeonjun was standing with one bare hip braced against the counter when Soobin came back out. The angle of his shoulders, backlit by the last light of the day through the windows, was arresting in its symmetry. Without his fur he looked slight and almost safe, but no less beguiling. Soobin tried to keep his hands from trembling as he approached him with the fur held out.
Clothed once more, Yeonjun leaned into him with a smile. Soobin stared down at that venus fly trap of a mouth; it opened for him, a wet cavern that tasted like acorn jelly. Plush and sticky sweet, promising things Soobin had long wondered about.
He pulled back, startled by the surge of his own want, and unsure what to do with it.
Yeonjun looked up at him. His hand circled Soobin’s wrist, and squeezed. He brushed their noses together in question.
Soobin, petrified, could not meet that liquid gaze. It was too close, a thing of too much power.
After an empty moment, Yeonjun nodded and stepped back. As usual, he did not pay before leaving the shop.
Soobin opened and closed the apartment door as quietly as he could, but it made no difference. His parents were waiting for him. Sitting on the faded yellow armchair by the window was his father, stony-faced. His mother, on the mismatched sofa, wouldn’t look at him. On the tired coffee table in front of them was an ashtray, overflowing with the corpses of too many cigarettes. That was how Soobin knew. His knees locked in place where he stood.
“Where were you?” his father asked first, in clipped Korean.
Soobin didn’t bother answering. This was a tired old dance to which they all knew the steps. He didn’t want to walk forward into the trap. There wasn’t ever a right answer.
“Mrs. Rosenfeld called. She wanted to know why they still haven’t received Mr. Rosenfeld’s shirts. He has to go to court in the morning, and you were supposed to deliver them. You keep saying you’re dropping off orders, but they’re not getting to our customers. Now we have to give them a refund, and a free wash. So what is it that you’re actually doing after you push us out of the shop?”
“Just looking after things there. Closing up.” The false words came easily to him; wasn’t every animal born with the instinct for self defense, after all? “I should have given them the shirts, I can go do that now–“
“No, stay.”
Soobin found himself looking up at the ceiling. As a child, they used to make him kneel there, in the center of the living room, for hours. He knew those ceiling tiles by heart: fourteen long, nine across. Three of them had water stains from the upstairs neighbor’s burst pipe. The stains made a sort of jagged peak shape, which he used to imagine was a fantastical mountain rife with dangers. But at the top, a golden shrine with a distressed prince trapped within, waiting for rescue-
“Were you with Beomgyu?” asked his father sharply.
Soobin startled. “What? No.”
“Don’t lie to us, I was right there when he called earlier. You know we don’t want you seeing him.”
“I’m not lying.”
His mother shook her head, still looking down. “We never should’ve let you stop going to church,” she said.
“Okay.” Soobin laughed sharply; a brittle sound. “Sure. More church is the answer to everything.” He realized suddenly that he had switched back to English to say this.
His father jumped to his feet. But the sharp flint of his eyes couldn’t cut Soobin anymore. He was taller, and stronger. There was no reason he had to put up with this bullshit. No reason at all, he realized for the hundredth time, and more.
“This is why Hayoon left,” Soobin said, his voice moving towards a painful crescendo. “You want to know why your only daughter doesn’t talk to you anymore? You want to know why your son hates you? This is why,” he yelled.
“Why?” his father repeated, following him in English. Then, he snapped back to Korean. “Why?”
Soobin stared him down, sullen. It was too easy to cry if he didn’t set his features into a lithic scowl; he’d learned this years ago and now it was his mask.
“For never letting you go hungry, not even a single missed meal. For giving you a warm bed to sleep in every night. For not kicking you out when you send disgusting, unnatural messages with boys at your school! This is why!” His father picked up the ashtray and sent it flying towards the wall; a sooty stain bloomed against the wallpaper as the glass shattered into tiny pieces that spun everywhere on the floor.
Soobin crushed a few underfoot on his way out.
The wind was cold on Soobin’s neck as he pedaled down the street. It was night, and shadows chased the back wheel of his bike.
Crossing through the park was the quickest way, though Soobin didn’t like to at this hour. The city stubbornly refused to install enough lamp posts along its pathways, even though with its many trees the place was starting to become overgrown with roots and weeds and wild animals. Notoriously, the park attracted the kind of nighttime elements that made church elders close their eyes and wring their hands. Soobin decided to cut across the main field. It was dark enough now that he reached out to switch on the headlight at the front junction of his handlebars.
Light on: two bright beads glowed back at him from the grass.
Soobin gasped, swerved hard. His bike tipped over and he fell.
On his knees, he could just make out the shape of two large ears hovering above those reflective eyes. A pointed face, a fox face, stared back at him. The white fur of its throat shone in the dark like a beacon. Soobin, transfixed, watched it step closer on dainty feet. Slowly, he reached out a hand. Just beyond his fingertip hovered its sharp, wet nose. But before they could touch, the fox froze. It retreated carefully, though Soobin leaned forward, extending his arm as far as he could. Then the fox turned and, with a sudden flash of tail, disappeared into a copse of trees.
After a moment Soobin stumbled to his feet. He righted his bike, which was fine apart from a bent spoke. Shivering, he pedaled into the night once more.
In front of Beomgyu’s apartment, Soobin saw the light in his window and shot off a text. Not too late to try out that multiplayer? He chained his bike to the grate. Within a minute, the front gate unlocked with a buzz and Soobin let himself in.
“Shh,” Beomgyu hissed at the door. “They just went to bed.”
Soobin nodded.
Beomgyu’s bedroom could’ve been a museum exhibit for the habitat of a carefree young man, but Soobin saw the signs of a panicked ten-second reckoning. The hem of a sweatshirt peeked out from beneath the bed, and there was still a sock as well as some dried grains of rice on the hastily swept desk.
“Are you limping?” Beomgyu asked with concern after he’d closed the door behind them.
“No,” Soobin lied. His right kneecap hadn’t taken the fall very well. When he peeled off his jeans, there would be a bruise. He sat down heavily on the bed, exhausted.
Beomgyu approached him with caution. When he sat next to Soobin, it was done so lightly that the mattress barely dipped. “I thought you were going to come by earlier,” he said. His hand twitched on the comforter, making minute progress towards Soobin’s.
Soobin saw this, and moved his hands onto his lap as naturally as he was able. “Can I stay here for a little bit?”
Beomgyu’s hand shrank back and balled into a fist. “Of course,” he said, his voice an easy contrast to his actions.
“You shouldn’t agree before I tell you how long,” Soobin laughed. “I need a few days, I think. Just until I find my own place.”
“You’re moving out? Is it because of–“ Beomgyu’s eyes cut over to look guiltily at his phone on the nightstand.
“Yeah. No. It’s just time.”
“I’m sorry. Of course you can stay,” he repeated.
Wearing Beomgyu’s most oversized shirt, Soobin slid under the covers with him. There were glow-in-the-dark stars and planets stuck on the ceiling, and it reminded him of the fox’s eyes at the park. That in turn made him think of Yeonjun.
“Something happened today,” he said.
“Yeah?” Beomgyu mumbled sleepily. He had stopped trying to touch Soobin.
“There was a fox.”
“That’s bad luck. Foxes trick people.”
Soobin turned onto his side. It wasn’t as though he didn’t see the appeal of Beomgyu. Beomgyu was clever, and he had excellent taste in video games. When they were in high school, he sang and strummed an original piece for the talent show that had girls waffling around his locker for weeks. It had made Soobin laugh at the time, but there was something about it… because afterwards, he couldn’t help but look at Beomgyu a little differently.
As far back as he could remember, Beomgyu had looked at him differently too. And without shame, the way Soobin had been taught by peer and parent.
They spoke no more.
Soobin dreamed fitfully: he pulled on the skin of an animal while the fox watched and laughed at him. Then it unzipped its own face down the center, and, impossibly, Yeonjun emerged from within. He was naked, as Soobin saw him at the laundry. On his back, in vivid red ink, was a lotus flower so huge that it stretched from one flank to the other. Soobin wanted to touch it, outline it with the heat of his tongue.
“Don’t you want to kiss me?” Yeonjun asked, looking back at him over a piquant shoulder.
He did, but no matter how desperately Soobin leaned forward their lips never touched; they only continued to fall closer together in a slow eternity.
Just before dusk the next day Soobin hovered across the street from the laundry. He watched as his parents flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED and locked up at the time he would have urged them home anyway. Soobin had wondered about that; here, in this one thing, they did not disappoint him.
The sun continued its downward creep. Soobin waited.
At that alchemical moment suspended between day and night, Yeonjun appeared in his burnished fur. He did not even try to go inside the shop. Instead, he stood in front of the door, looked up and caught Soobin where he stood, awkwardly staring from the other side of the street. His grin was piercing and sophic.
Soobin crossed the two lanes between them without looking to either side, as though his feet were floating through air.
“Hi,” greeted Yeonjun. “Not open today?”
“No, sorry.”
“But what about my coat from yesterday?” he asked, looking up through those lashes.
Soobin hesitated, then nodded. “Wait here.” He had his key on him, he could go in through the back door where there wasn’t a security camera…
Yeonjun’s fingers caught around his wrist. “I’m only joking. I don’t need it.” He raised and lowered a shoulder. “I have this one.”
“But it’s yours. I should give it back,” said Soobin, looking down at where Yeonjun’s hand had slid lower to hold his own, their fingers locking together like it made perfect sense.
“You can keep it.” Yeonjun’s voice was a teasing, silken whisper. “If you give me something in return.”
“I don’t have much,” Soobin warned. But even as he said this, he knew that didn’t matter.
Yeonjun’s answering laugh was a windswept sound. What he wanted had nothing to do with Soobin’s poverty.
“Here,” said Yeonjun.
Soobin clamped on the brakes, and his feet touched down to the park’s dirt path. The edges of it were obscured with the encroachment of untended weeds, as though nature wished to erase the touch of man. Yeonjun hopped off the back of his bike, jade earrings swinging around the contours of his cheeks. Soobin set down the kickstand, and followed him into the trees. As he walked deeper into the forest, the lines of Yeonjun’s body seemed to move with a primal rhythm that Soobin was not privy to, following an instinct that required no thought or validation. Soobin could not understand it, and further, he understood that he was not supposed to.
Yeonjun turned to brace his back against a tree, and smiled at him with teeth.
As he lay in Beomgyu’s bed last night, Soobin had thought for hours about what he wanted. He stepped forward now with a new surety; though caught, he was resolved. Soobin’s fingertip skied down the slope of Yeonjun’s nose and, pressing on the center of that pulpy bottom lip, pulled it down until the pink inner flesh of his mouth was exposed. Yeonjun shuddered at his touch but did not resist.
Soobin leaned in to meet the languid heat of Yeonjun’s mouth, so sweet and willing to share its secrets. It was impossible to know how to move his hands, what to hold, because Soobin hungered to feel it all. Yeonjun helped, moving against him like waves cresting around a ship’s hull. But the line and curve of his body was all hidden, blocky beneath the fur coat.
“Can you,” he asked.
“You can,” he said.
Soobin pulled down the zipper beneath Yeonjun’s throat, and the fur slid off as easily as water. The true shape of him was revealed– imperfect, but so sublime nonetheless that Soobin had to taste him again.
This time, his tongue curled around something small and hard in Yeonjun’s mouth. Surprised, Soobin began to pull away, but Yeonjun grabbed the front of his shirt, eyes wide. He was inescapable, and passed the little pearl over like a gift.
Soobin spit it out; in the palm of his hand, it was the size and shape of a lotus seed. A fox bead, Soobin realized. A grain of knowledge given with purpose rather than taken by force. He sucked it back into his mouth, and swallowed. It was berry-sweet on the tongue but bitter going down.
Yeonjun looked at him with an aching joy, and to Soobin it felt like resurrection.
- ☼ -
Beomgyu thought of him mostly at daybreak.
Ever since Soobin disappeared, he’d become an early riser. As the sun stretched its arms out across rooftops and slipped between the slats of window shades, he’d lay in bed and think of him. The night they spent together, not touching. The things unsaid. He had many words, now forever without a home. Grief and melancholy were twin sisters; sometimes one visited without the other, but more often than not they sat with him in tandem.
If morning was the time for quiet thoughts of Soobin, dusk was when Beomgyu had to confront the lost reality of him. The laundry was on his way home more often than not, and Beomgyu often rode past on his bike with a guilty mind. He wouldn’t walk; it was too easy to be spotted ambling by on foot. But on the bike, with the bent spoke preceding him, he could each day catch just a glance of something. Most of the time: Soobin’s father behind the register, a phone squeezed between neck and shoulder, scribbling orders down furiously. That used to be Soobin’s job, Beomgyu knew intimately.
Once, he’d even walked around behind the shop, curious about the place he knew Soobin often sat on the stoop and texted him back. Instead of a quiet reprieve Beomgyu had run into his mother, red-faced and puffy-eyed in the midst of a cry. Her slow shock at seeing him turned condemning and sour; he fled before words could be spoken.
Always, always afraid of words.
At day’s end, with the warm embrace of dusk at his back, Beomgyu rode through the park standing up on his thin legs. It was summer-hot, and the favor of many sunlit hours had the grass growing thick and tangled over the paths. The city had more or less capitulated on the idea of fighting against the forest creep, but for him it was still the quickest way home. Common now was the sight of squirrel and badger and crow scurrying good-naturedly away from his bike’s front wheel. At least here, among tree and beast, he could feel peace.
A sudden bark of a laugh startled Beomgyu into whipping his head around. Skidding to a stop, he listened.
There was a chittering sound there, just where the field melted into the treeline. Beomgyu squinted to see:
– burning flashes of orange red against grass and dirt.
A pair of foxes danced at the edge of the forest, their fur thick and bright as they leapt over one another liquidly, almost glowing by the last light of day. As though they noticed his gaze, they stopped their play to stare, golden eyes wide, mouths open and panting. Sharp little teeth with tongue. Then, as if by mutual fiat, they turned to show him their full, white-tipped tails and melted into the undergrowth.
Beomgyu smiled to see them go. He put his weight down on the up-pedal and rode home.